


Come to You in Pieces

by theLiterator



Series: Pieces [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Relationships, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, F/F, Father-Daughter Relationship, Flashbacks, Implied Partner Betrayal, Implied/Referenced Torture, Inheritance, Loyalty, Trial by Combat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-12 00:13:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7076509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nyssa does what she must, and Sara does the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come to You in Pieces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Traxits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Traxits/gifts).



_“Do what you have to do,” her Beloved whispers, and Nyssa can see the future stretching out before her in a great, shining path_.

The only thing Nyssa knew for certain was that Sara could not die. She blamed the archer, for part of it, for all of it: _her_ Sara had never wished for death. _Her_ Sara would always find a way to survive.

When she returned to her men alone, Malik smiled at her, his expression one of genuine pleasure. “My lady Nyssa,” he called her, bowing politely before taking her hands and binding them. “Your treason is against Ra’s al Ghul himself, and you will be tried in Nanda Parbat.”

When her men fell in line with him, she could see that some of them were as pleased as Malik, as _loyal_ as Malik, and some of them wanted to go after Sara themselves.

“Defection is not tolerated,” she heard muttered, but Malik was the strongest of her guard, and none would dare go against his orders, not when they assumed _someone_ would bring Sara back.

Nyssa had spent the last hour planning, and knew that she could make both her treason and Sara’s oathbreaking the same crime. Only one person would die for this, and it would not be Sara.

***

The torture was exquisite.

Then again, that was nothing she hadn't expected. How many times had she stayed down here, watched them at work, watched as they broke down and reshaped even the most stubborn fools who had dared step against the League? Against her father? They were masters at their art, and even on this end, she had to appreciate the skill with which they drew every gasp, every instinctive whine that she couldn't keep back.

But the material that had fashioned Nyssa was not so easily reshaped.

They were masters at their art, but she was an al Ghul, and not even _they_ could twist that stone.

The pain washed through her, burning every nerve it touched, but it was nothing compared to what she'd already endured during training. The sting in her muscles was familiar, the press of each blade known. She'd been stabbed before. Been cut and had her insides kiss the air before she had managed to patch herself up. She bore the scars of the League, and this would only be one more set of them.

She _let_ the pain wash through her, rode each wave and crest, and when she could feel her mind at the breaking point, she thought of Sara. Of that smile. Of her yellow bird's laugh.

It had been present even in the wreckage on Lian Yu, as Nyssa marshalled her guard to search for the rumored agent of immortality hidden there. Her father had a monopoly on immortality, and would brook no changes to that status.

Sara, Nyssa remembered, had not wanted to die. She had been a wreck of split and bruising skin, of broken bones and charred hair and sunken eyes, and Nyssa had thought her one of the many many dead at first, had merely rolled her over to shut her eyes and mark her location for proper disposition, when a hand had clamped tight around her wrist.

 _“Stay,”_ the Sara in her memory said. _“It won’t be long, and I-- I don’t want to be alone.”_

Nyssa, enraptured, had shifted her stance from a hovering crouch to something more suitable for waiting, and she had shifted the woman’s grip so she was holding her hand, and she had stayed.

It could have been eternities that she had stayed with Sara that first day, and she wove out the time in between the necessary distractions of her torture, having conversations with her Beloved, imagined and real, for the very first time.

_“What’s your name?” Sara asked, smiling a grim and bloodied smile that was beautiful the way all death was; as the sunset and the falling leaves were beautiful and terrible in their beauty._

_“I am...Nyssa,” she had replied. She had, just this time, left off her title, her family name; had left her father out of things. He may ever straddle the lines between life and death, but his death was a terrible, fearful thing, and Sara knew not fear._

_“I’m Sara Lance,” had come the strained reply. “I know-- I know it’s a lot, but my parents-- they should have my body.”_

_Nyssa’s grip on Sara’s hand had gone rigid as steel then, and she had forced herself to smile. “I will see what can be done,” she had promised. Nyssa knew, by then, not to promise more than she could deliver, for her honor belonged to her father, to the League, but the wishes of the dying were a sacred thing, to be held close and kept in solemn mind once they had parted._

_The League of Shadows, after all, knew death quite intimately._

Pain became constant, Nyssa noted, and along with it came hunger, and chill, and thirst; all the privations her torturers could manage without outright killing her, for she would need to be fit enough to stand at her trial, to hear her father’s accusations, to hear his sentence.

_Sara Lance did not die, even as the sun sank into the ocean with a sudden splendor soon forgot, and Nyssa could feel the fevered strength in Sara’s hands, see the desperate desire that ebbed and flowed within her eyes, and so she picked her up, and Sara bit her lip but did not cry out from pain, and Nyssa took her to her men, some of them loyal, even then, to her and her alone, and she laid the yellow-haired girl in her own bunk in her own cabin, and she commanded them to go home._

_Nyssa half-expected Sara Lance to die at sea, and she would have done as the girl wished-- would have taken her to the family that filled her fevered waking hours._

_“My dad,” she would whisper, voice cracking from the strain of her death-grip on life itself, “He’s… you’d like him, I think. Or he’d like you. You’re-- upright. You’re-- he likes people who believe in what they do, who know who they are.”_

_Or, “Laurel… she… She deserved someone better than me for a sister,” and Sara Lance would pause, but never cry._

Not as she had at Nyssa’s attempt at retrieval; Nyssa had thought her spirit indomitable, until _she_ had subdued it.

And that… that had never been her intention.

The quiet, steady pain of her current existence was worth, she thought, rectifying that.

_“I should-- you seem like you are-- important?” “Yes, Sara Lance,” Nyssa replied, smiling a little. “Sometimes, at least. When I need to be.”_

_“When duty calls?” Sara asked, a teasing lilt to her voice even then. Nyssa shrugged helplessly. “Ollie’s important too,” Sara said. “Only, it’s all the time, and he_ hates _it. You have to-- when you meet him, you keep that in mind.”_

Nyssa had never, after all, ended up meeting Sara’s Ollie, even though she wanted to, a little bit. To see him the way Sara had described, to keep one of the hundreds upon hundreds of tiny promises she had ended up swearing to Sara.

Of course, now-- now she would not. But Sara had him, still, and her archer, and her sister and her father, and she would be happy.

She would be free. No one’s pretty little bird but her own, and Nyssa…

The torturer, the best of her father’s men, smiled at her sudden tear, though only one fell. He thought it was for him.

Nyssa did not care; she knew it was for herself alone.

She was Nyssa al Ghul; Daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, and she would die with the honor _she_ had made, not that which had been bestowed.

***

Ra’s al Ghul had not deigned to interview his daughter before she was sent to the dungeons to be tortured in anticipation of her trial, and Nyssa had expected nothing less.

Her father, while a font of intolerance and iron-fisted rule, liked to believe himself _soft_ when it came to matters about his daughters and his beloved wives.

Nyssa was used to this; had, perhaps, even believed it at some points in her life. No longer.

“You hated her,” she told him when he appeared in the dark of midnight three weeks into her incarceration. 

He shook his head. “Daughter,” he whispered, and the guards to her cell took that as it was intended: implicit dismissal. Nyssa smiled at him, and her lips cracked and blood oozed from the cracks.

She would not, of course, admit to thirst, to hunger, to the chill of dungeon air against naked skin, to anything but her righteous plea for trial by combat.

“I wished only for your happiness and success as my Heir,” he said, and he shrugged off his robes and seated himself on the floor next to her. His shoulder was warm where it brushed against hers with only the thin fabric of his black silk khet between them. “I strongly suspected that your… entanglement with the girl would lead only to pain and recriminations,” he paused, taking her hand in his and examining it minutely. “It always does, with Americans.”

Nyssa wanted to refuse his comfort, because it was _not_ comforting, but she did not, because she remembered the emptiness of Sara’s gaze at the end, the taste of her kiss, the… despair. _Suicide_.

Nyssa tucked her knees up to her chest and wrapped her free arm around them, and her father sighed, slow and even, and dragged his robe over to drape about her person.

“Why did you not allow Malik to act in your stead?” he asked. “He is loyal enough, and willing for it. I sent him with you for good reason, daughter. He--” Ra’s cut himself off with a swallow.

“You think he would allow me to commit treason against your name? It is clear that he would not; he brought me back,” Nyssa replied, repaying loyalty with loyalty.

Loyalty was all the League had. Loyalty and honor and the powers of the Pit her father so jealously guarded.

“My daughter,” her father said slowly. “Goes nowhere she does not will.”

Nyssa let herself relax against his shoulder, and he stroked her hair. “I knew,” he said after a very long silence, “That you were far too much like Aminah for anyone’s peace of mind when you were eight years old.”

Nyssa did not apologize, for al Ghuls do not apologize-- al Ghuls do not regret, or feel remorse.

She was not much of an al Ghul; too much, as her father had said, like her mother.

“Tomorrow we must address the matter of your Beloved’s treason,” he said, and she felt herself relax minutely at his phrasing. She _would_ be able to dispatch this in one action, then.

He twitched the folds of his robes, pressed a stoppered glass vial into her hands.

He kissed her brow and smoothed her hair back and held her long past the time when she had expected him to leave, and she leaned into his embrace.

This, after all, was his offering of mercy, and she appreciated the sentiment, but she knew that she could not take this coward’s way out, not before full trial, not before settling the matter of treason between her father and her Beloved.

She might, once, have trusted the man who held her close and kissed her as kin, but she could _never_ trust the Demon’s Head; political expediency would demand Sara’s blood eventually, and Nyssa had made a promise in his name.

It was really _his_ honor that demanded she not take this opportunity for escape.

And she had spent her whole life aware that her every privilege was banked upon _his_ honor, and she would adhere to that knowledge to her very last.

And, of course, in doing, she would save Sara Lance from the life Ta-er al-Sahfar, which was entirely, wholly selfish of her, but Nyssa had been dutiful daughter her entire life.

Surely, in death, she could claim some ground for herself.

***

The next morning, she was roused from what little slumber she had managed once her father had left, taking with him his robes and his comfortable warmth but leaving her with the vial.

The guard who came to wake her was shocked to see her move, and she smiled a feral, desperate grin at him, from which he visibly recoiled.

“You are to be taken to your trial,” she was told, and she nodded. 

“My things?” she demanded, and he frowned, but gestured his fellow guard forward.

She’d known both men since she’d been a teenager; the second one, Alekios, had come to the League a starveling boy of 13; she’d broken his arm when he’d been 16 and had thought himself strong enough to take _her_ to bed.

He looked away from her nudity now, fumbling to offer her clothing and armor and her own blade and bow while his cheeks flushed scarlet with a shame she did not _quite_ understand.

They had fought together, been injured in each other’s presence, and seen more of one another than even a mother might see of her daughter, but _now_ he chose shame?

Men baffled her, she thought, not for the first time.

Well, _most_ men, she amended, thinking of her father and his rigid belief in the laws of Nanda Parbat, of the League. Of Malik and his bone-deep loyalty to her and hers. Of, unaccountably, Ollie who Sara had loved before her, and the archer, after.

But then, loving Sara was the easiest thing in the world to understand.

She smiled, thinking of Sara’s laugh and the fine silk of her yellow hair, and Alekios jerked back and swore in his native language.

“You know you’re going to be sentenced to death,” he told her in low, harsh tones, and she pulled herself back to the present, assessing.

His loyalty, then, lay in the same direction as Malik’s. She slid her gaze over to her first guard, and he watched them with studied indifference.

How many, then, were already hers, in a political game that would end before it had truly begun, today? She smiled again, this time for Alekios.

“Neither of us can know what the Demon’s Head will dictate,” she said slowly. “Nor,” she added, pretending that it was an afterthought; fleeting. Unimportant. “Nor can _you_ know my own actions before I have made them.”

She showed him the vial she had not opened before slipping it into her belt.

Her father’s last gift to a daughter who had never been _quite_ what he wanted. She would treasure it for as long as she had.

***

She was announced with her full title, and something akin to fear crawled down her spine, though she could not, quite, attribute the feeling to any particular portent.

She was going to die; she was going to die that her beloved might live, and that was not something to dread; it was a _relief_.

“Nyssa,” her father said, and there was no indication of surprise in his expression, no dismay that she had rejected his gift.

But then, there wouldn’t be-- she was, after all, as much _his_ child as her mother’s, no matter how heavy a burden that had proven to be over her life.

“My Lord Ra’s,” she said, bowing her head. He had not yet revoked her title, and she would grant him no more obeisance than his Heir owed him.

If he had been another man, the slight return tilt might have meant amusement, but here it was only acceptable protocol.

“I come before you with a plea,” she said before he could lay her crimes at her feet. “Ta-er al-Sahfer who once came before you and swore her fealty wishes to be released of that oath.”

“Does she,” he said. “And who are you, to make that request at her whim.”

“I am beloved to Ta-er al-Sahfer, who would once again be called Sara Lance,” Nyssa said.

Ra’s raised an eyebrow, and there was a murmur at that, for while Nyssa had claimed Sara as hers, often and publicly, for Sara’s protection and her own peace of mind, Sara had not made the reverse claim. The lie settled heavily upon her, but, she thought, Sara would not mind that small mischaracterization in light of the greater goal of her freedom.

“She swore an oath of blood and body,” Ra’s said. “She cannot be released without paying her debt to the League.”

Nyssa nodded once, cool and detached. “I would dispatch this debt in the traditional way. My lord Ra’s, I challenge you to trial by combat.”

His breathing never changed, his expression never flickered, but he nodded once, a jerky little motion, and the dread that had crept into Nyssa as she'd entered the room spread to every limb.

“I accept,” Ra’s said. “With this trial at arms, blood will be spilled, and Ta-er al-Sahfer will be no more.”

Nyssa felt her mouth stretch into a grim, narrow smile, and the gathered men were too disciplined to murmur among themselves, but they shifted in place and she knew she was not the only who had sudden fear choking in her throat.

***

Traditionally, trial by combat was conducted naked on the summit. This had been true since even before her father’s memory, and this was far too important, far too _vital_ for her to balk, not when she had stood less important bouts in her skin alone.

The chill wind at the summit licked at her bared flesh, but after the weeks of privation, a little chill was unimportant, and in the face of Sara’s life restored her, it registered not at all.

Nyssa had always preferred a bow to the blade, but she had been drilled in the use of both since she had been big enough to lift one. Unaccountably, the sense-memory of her father fitting her fingers, much smaller than his, then, around a hilt washed over her.

When she shook her head to dismiss it, it was replaced by the similar memory of her showing Sara how to hold a sword, her hands still weak from her near-death, but curving strong and delicate around the unfamiliar weapon. _“With this,” Nyssa whispered, “You need never fear again.”_

And what a liar she had turned out to be.

“Nyssa,” Malik said, offering her a sheathed blade and interrupting her thoughts. He hesitated, for normally when she fought on this mountaintop, it was her father who offered her a blessing of luck, but then he moved forward decisively, seized her face in his hands, and pressed a cool kiss to her brow. “Fight true,” he said.

She nodded, mute. It felt-- wrong. A severing.

Her father, of course, had no one willing or wanting to offer him the same; she had a wild thought of giving it herself, but that would be ill-wishing, and he would not approve besides.

She wondered when he had last had someone wishing him luck, but did not ask.

Instead, she bowed, and he bowed in return, and the wind picked up as the silk fluttered to the ground.

Nyssa did not want to draw out her own death; she suspected-- _hoped_ \-- that it would be cruel to her father to do so, so she darted in fast and strong, swinging the blade with the precision of a lifetime of practice, and she did not back away when his blade swung up to match hers in a resounding crash that she could feel through her very bones.

He wanted to keep it as brief as she did, and they exchanged only a half dozen more blows before he caught first blood; the tip of his sword carved deeply into her cheek and she could feel the blood start to sluggishly drip free.

Ra’s did not approve of celebrating victory early, so he said nothing; the gathered crowd said nothing.

The wind continued to howl.

The next exchange, Nyssa lost her footing and her blade-tip dropped a second too soon, and Ra’s followed through, slipping his own blade around hers and sliding it into her just beneath her ribcage. The pain shocked the breath from her in a way no torture ever could, because unlike torture, in battle, pain warned of losing life.

Ra’s followed his blade, pushing it through and through, and Nyssa sucked in a breath that came out clean, for he had somehow missed her lung.

She felt her own sword still heavy in her hand and she brought it up on instinct, cutting him with the leading edge, and there was not enough room between them so she grabbed bared steel with naked skin and drove it into him. Higher than his blade had pierced her, high enough to be fatal.

She waited for him to twist his own blade and drag it up through her, but he did not.

She forced her eyes up, to meet his gaze, and she could see shadowed green there, sparkling and swirling in the depths.

“Nyssa,” he breathed; the wind nearly stole the words from him. “Daughter.”

Nyssa opened her mouth to reply, though she had no idea what to say.

He smiled a grim, deadly smile, the sort of pleased expression she had once been happy to walk on burning coals to see, and he reached up for her blade, cutting his hand too and tangling their fingers together, so when he twisted her blade through his chest she could feel the wrenching grate of steel on bone and the strength of his hand around hers as it had felt when she had been small and a sword had been a new toy for her to play with under Aminah’s dubious maternal gaze.

“Fight true,” he whispered.

His last words, as his grip went lax and the green faded from his eyes and he slid back off her blade to the frozen mountain peak.

The whole mountain seemed to freeze in time for one perfect, shining moment, and then Sarab moved, dropping most of Ra’s’s discarded clothes and crossing the ring in two graceful strides to wrap her in his robes. _Her_ robes, she realized, her thoughts moving sluggish and slow, like the blood spilling out from around her father’s blade.

“Here,” he said, and he forced her bloodied fingers to curl around the hilt of the sword still inside her. “Don’t let it shift, Ra’s,” he added, a special emphasis on the title that had her blinking up at him. His eyes were remote, emotionless, and she had no idea why she had expected anything else from the phantom who had never given the League his birth name.

Once he was certain she would comply, he crouched to the body of her dead father and pried his ring from his finger, and when he slipped it on her finger, she could not look away from it and the blood that was freezing in the crevices of its design.

Malik was at her side then, naked steal in hand, and Alekios was behind her, holding her armor and arms.

“The Pit,” Sarab ordered coldly, and Nyssa shuddered, but her protest died unvoiced, at Malik’s prompt reply. “Or it’s all of our lives.”

Sarab snorted. “There is a clear line of succession--”

“And a kingdom of murderers wanting to steal it from her. Alekios--”

“I will secure the way. I know who to trust,” he added, and Sarab murmured approval.

“I don’t--”

“You will live for us,” Sarab said, voice as indomitable as the mountain beneath her feet as they made their way swiftly down the path. “Since your father would not.”

And it was true. She had discharged her obligation to her Beloved, but the one she owed her father went back in a clear and glorious line spanning centuries of rule.

She let them usher her into the depths of Nanda Parbat, to the room with its fearful waters that stole death away from all who bathed in them, and when Sarab and Malik stripped the robe away, when Alekios tore her father’s sword from her body, when a dozen faceless guards pushed her into the murky waters, she did not breathe another word of protest to any of them.

***

The green light of death surrounded her at once and buoyed her up, taking away the wound and knitting it up so that she felt the blow a thousand thousand times over in the remaking of her flesh.

The scar, the Pit left her, because death is the ultimate mercy, and the waters could feel the ache of a little girl for her father, though she knew she had it buried deep.

The Pit spoke to her in the voices of her mother, her father, of Sara Lance and _her_ parents, all jumbled up together and asking her if she craved vengeance more, or power, and she craved none of it but she reached for the faceless constructs with the voices of those who might have loved her regardless.

“Shh, shh, Nyssa, all is well.” Malik’s whisper pierced through the woven dreams of dying and the green cast on the world so that when she opened her eyes all she could see was his face. “I have secured Nanda Parbat, and when you can stand without aid, all will swear fealty to you, my lady Ra’s.”

Nyssa snorted. “Sarab?” she asked, because while he had helped her before, he had been her father’s as much as Malik had been hers, and Malik shook his head and his mouth twisted in a familiar smile of amusement.

“He guards your door himself. He does not trust an unsworn blade.”

Nyssa tried to smile for that, but her stomach rebelled and her vision clouded green for a long, disorienting moment.

“Sara Lance?” she forced herself to ask.

“Is well and with her family. Her sister is also well, and we will send trusted men to her city once they have sworn their oaths to you.”

“No,” Nyssa said. “Sara Lance is not a League concern.”

“She is your Beloved,” Malik said simply.

Nyssa could not argue that.

She sat up and ignored the pain in her side, though her fingers reached to soothe it away and encountered scarred flesh. She frowned and looked down.

“The Pit,” Malik said, “Has its own plans.”

Nyssa nodded, and, once standing, held her arms out; a silent command for her most trusted lieutenant to armor her against the day.

Against the lifetime her father had given her without once asking what _she_ would like.

*****

Sara had feared this… homecoming, but she had known it was necessary, and, alongside the fear she felt at the welcome she might receive, she _craved_ it as well.

The League had saved her-- _Nyssa_ had saved her, and loved her and trusted her, and she had…

She had always deserved the right to leave, she reminded herself sternly as she climbed out of the jeep she had rented with money she no longer should have access to, and she started her climb.

Nanda Parbat had been awesome and sheltering when she’d still been high on the terror of Slade’s madness and the chill of the North China Sea, and eventually it had become a haven for her, a place she knew she could sleep soundly with Nyssa warm and ever vigilant at her side.

She had fallen in love, maybe. She wasn’t sure, in retrospect, whether it had been love at all; it certainly hadn’t held the vibrant spark of desperation her relationship with Ollie always had, and it didn’t feel quite the same as the steady velvet pulse of her bond with Laurel, with her parents. But still, at the time, in the blush of the grandeur of a fairy tale, one where the princess was both rescuer and captor, it had felt…

_Real._

It took her a long time-- too long, really, with the threat to Starling City dogging at her heels and the hours on an international flight to go before she could be back where she belonged, defending it-- to reach the secret entrance into the grand halls of Nanda Parbat.

She stopped a moment, just inside, and the flickering of candlelight reflected in the guards’ eyes was the only sign of life in them, for all the attention they paid her, and inhaled the rich scent of perfume and incense and exotic foods that Nyssa had taught her the names of. She stared up at the mosaiced ceiling, at the fantastic battle between death itself and Ra’s al Ghul, remembering other mosaics on other ancient ceilings that she had memorized and associated with pleasure and laughter and love in her time here.

The whole place made her remember what Laurel had told her once, when she’d asked about Ollie: “He doesn’t realize he lives in a mansion,” she’d said. “He looks at all the things his grandparents touched, and their grandparents, and he doesn’t… he doesn’t see. It’s so _weird_ , but I think I could live with it, probably.”

Laurel had laughed it off, had said something about the rest being worth that little bit of it, but with Nyssa--

_Nyssa’s hands never turned cruel, not like the other master swordsmen and bowmen and poisoners who tried to train her. Sometimes, Nyssa would even smile at Sara, a warm, private thing that Sara knew from watching was a rare, perfect gift for her and her alone, and it was Sara’s decision, when she’d walked into her chambers after working out for hours in the most basic of sword drills, to teach her the instinct that Nyssa had mastered by the time she was five, to follow the rich aroma of incense and to walk up the stairs to the bathing pool where Nyssa awaited her in nothing but her skin._

_The water was steaming hot and slicked with oils that Nyssa had chosen, and the world felt heavy and humid against her bare skin for the long seconds it took her to settle down in the bath with her._

_When Nyssa’s fingers twined with hers, she could feel the rough edges of callouses even with the oil to mute the sensation, and she had had a moment to realize that Nyssa, gentle as she was, was a_ killer _, and Sara would not change her._

 _It was then that Sara had decided to become a killer herself, so that the fingers linked with hers would be_ hers _always, and she had smiled at Nyssa, had initiated their first kiss, but even then she had known that it wasn’t really_ her _who Nyssa wanted, but a bright facsimile of her; the version of Sara who was unfazed by the rich mosaiced ceilings and the ancient tapestries on the walls; the version of Sara who had come to this place by choice and not by dark and bloody necessity. The Sara who survived because she wanted to, not because she did not know how to die._

The men and few women that were walking through the corridors on their own business did not question Sara’s presence; nor did they do more than bow their heads in polite greeting, and Sara wondered if the infamous Al Sa-her would warrant the same sort of indifferent greeting.

It didn’t make much sense to her, but then, little about the League did, for all she’d lived it and bled for it for nearly four years.

She was halted at the doorway to the throne room by guards clad identically to the ones at the entrance, and she settled with her weight on the balls of her feet and her hand on her staff.

“State your intent, Sara Lance,” the guard on the left demanded.

“I petition Ra’s al Ghul for a favor,” she said in tones that came out strident and confident despite the fear that had taken up residence in the base of her spine and threatened to undermine her.

“What right have you to petition,” the second guard asked, less demanding; a rote formula that Sara answered before thinking.

“I am Beloved to Nyssa al Ghul,” she said. “I have right to the rank of one so Beloved, and the right to proceed unhindered and fully armed.”

“That is your right,” both guards agreed simultaneously, opening the doors and stepping aside.

Sara hadn’t actually expected that to work; especially since they had called her Sara and not the name Nyssa had given her, not Ta-er al-Sahfer.

She had come too far to stop, though, and Ollie needed her to do this, even if he’d probably throw a fit when he found out what she’d done, so she nodded at the men and strode through the doors to the throne room.

Ra’s was in the back corner of the room, probably peering at his maps and discussing some minor detail of some black market or mafia or shady government that was under his thumb, and none of his men looked up at her entrance, so she made her way to them on silent feet.

Despite the stealth of long practice, Sarab noticed her approach and turned, and his face, normally as expressionless as the night sky, registered surprise. His hand went to the familiar robed shoulder, and Sara sank to her knees before he could turn.

“My lord Ra’s,” she murmured, thinking that if she showed proper respect her request might be answered.

“Sara Lance,” was the reply, but it was not his voice, it was not-- “Beloved. _You_ don’t kneel to me.”

Sara looked up.

“Nyssa?” she asked, and her voice shook despite everything. “What-- what _happened?”_ she demanded.

Nyssa offered her a hand to get to her feet, and once she was standing, she did not relinquish the hold she had.

“Your _dad_ ,” Sara began, then had to cut herself off. If something had ever happened to _Sara’s_ dad, she didn’t think she could handle it, not with the impassive calm that Nyssa had gathered around herself as palpably as her father’s robes of office.

“He died in honorable combat,” Nyssa said. “Sarab, Malik, you will attend to this.”

“Of course, my lady Ra’s,” they murmured as one, and the group turned back to the table with its litter of important documents.

Nyssa still held Sara’s hand, and she guided her from the throne room and through the halls until they were no longer familiar, and then she finally opened a heavy teak door that swung out on silent hinges, and when Sara stepped inside, she realized where they were. Nyssa closed and barred the door behind them, and Sara turned in a slow circle before whistling in appreciation.

“Nice digs,” she said, smiling in an effort to cut through the tension she was not entirely sure she wasn’t imagining.

Nyssa had changed, and Sara was sure of only one thing: she didn’t like being unable to read her lover… her _beloved._

“Sara,” Nyssa said, and like that, she shed her father’s robes and stood before Sara in the black tunic-things she had always worn when they had nowhere to be, and the blankness of her expression melted into desperation and lust and joy.

Nyssa closed the gap that had opened up between them and seized her and kissed her with all the expert skill she employed in everything she did, and Sara leaned into the familiar touch, licking into Nyssa’s mouth and whining for _touch_ which was supplied immediately; Nyssa’s hands went to the back of her head, tangling in her hair, and her body surged forward so they were pressed close from thigh to chest, and Nyssa moaned low and visceral, and it was all Sara could do to move them to the next room, where she broke the kiss to see if she could figure out where the bed was, and Nyssa took _that_ hint too, and swept Sara up so Sara had to wrap her legs around Nyssa’s waist, and carried her over to it.

When Nyssa set her down, Sara leaned back to _look_ at her, and she licked her lips in reaction to the hot, heavy gaze that Nyssa had leveled on her.

Nyssa brought her hands up to the buttons at her throat, and suddenly she looked uncertain, like maybe Sara _didn’t_ want her naked, like, five minutes ago, and maybe Sara should have taken that hint, should have plead her case, but her mouth was dry and her body was arching up towards Nyssa without her conscious permission, so she reached for Nyssa and tugged her down onto the bed with her.

Nyssa tasted like cardamom and vanilla and iron, and Sara could _not_ get enough of her; her fingers tangled in Nyssa’s hair and Nyssa was smiling at her with undisguised pleasure.

“Come now, lover,” Nyssa said. “Let me go and I can undress for you.”

“Yes,” Sara said, and when Nyssa pulled away, she drew herself up on her elbows to watch.

Nyssa’s eyes were dark with desire as she slipped the shirt over her head and reached to undo the ties that held her loose pants up, and Sara remembered, belatedly, that jeans and a leather jacket were a lot harder to get out of, so she reluctantly tore her gaze away as Nyssa reached back to unfasten her bra.

Sara wriggled out of her clothes with none of the easy sensuality Nyssa had employed, and she remembered, belatedly, the places where Oliver’s hands had bruised her from holding too tight, the bite mark he’d left on her collarbone.

“Sara,” Nyssa breathed, ignoring the too-visible marks from another lover. Her hands ghosted across Sara’s skin and she bent to kiss Sara’s forehead, her cheek, her chin, her throat. “Touch me,” she said, crouched over Sara and drinking her in with pupils blown dark and hungry. “ _Please_ ,” she said, and something ghostly green surged in her eyes before Nyssa dropped her gaze.

Sara ignored the strangeness and instead reached for Nyssa as commanded, tugging her until she finally collapsed on top of her and the sensation of bare skin against hers was _arresting_ , so Sara could hardly think, could barely act.

Her hands trailed down Nyssa’s back, fingertips finding familiar scars and relearning the places where even Nyssa al Ghul was sensitive, tracking her reactions and shivering with delight when she found them unchanged.

“I--” Nyssa said, but she cut herself off by biting the skin of Sara’s throat, a sweet, delicate nip that had Sara throwing her head back in permission, and then Nyssa nuzzled into her skin, licking tenderly where she’d bitten as she trailed a warm hand along Sara’s side.

“God,” Sara whispered, reaching for her hand and tangling their fingers together again. “You--” Sara shook her head and Nyssa pulled back from Sara to look at her. “I forgot…” how much I loved this, she didn’t say. “How beautiful you are,” was the response she eventually chose.

Nyssa lowered her eyelashes demurely. “Not half so lovely as you, Sara Lance,” Nyssa said, her voice trembling a little.

Sara didn’t believe her, had never believed her, because Laurel had always been the pretty one, while Sara had been left to soak up what little attention remained in her wake, so she ran her fingers through Nyssa’s hair and tugged at her, wanting another kiss.

Nyssa ignored her hands and dragged her lips down Sara’s chest instead, tongue finding her nipple and licking it, hot and slick and rough and making Sara arch and gasp and _forget_.

Nyssa laughed, a low, indulgent noise, and Sara flexed her fingers n Nyssa’s hair, cutting off that noise.

Nyssa caressed Sara’s belly carefully, following her fingers with her mouth-- a kiss along the bottom of her ribcage, her tongue dipped briefly, wonderfully, against Sara’s navel, the nip of teeth right at the edge of her hipbone.

Nyssa had _always_ taken a great deal of pleasure in eating Sara out, and still, it surprised her as lips and tongue chased lower, and when fingers parted her and Nyssa licked a line of fire where she was most sensitive, Sara had to bite back a scream.

“Good, beloved?” Nyssa asked, drawing back and smirking at Sara. “Should I stop?”

“Don't you-- don't you _fucking_ dare, or the League’s gonna be looking for a new Ra’s.”

Nyssa’s eyes sparkled with amusement and she dipped her head back between Sara's thighs.

With a great effort of will, Sara unclenched her fingers from Nyssa's hair and pressed her palms flat to the bed at her sides.

Nyssa hummed contemplatively and Sara jerked and whined deep in the back of her throat.

“Please,” Sara begged, “Please just-- _please_.”

Nyssa never asked for any sort of clarification on Sara’s pleading, she'd always just done what she'd planned on doing and carried Sara along for the ride; and Sara had, once, reveled in it.

Still did, she realized, as Nyssa’s fingers joined her tongue and pressed right up against the core of her and carried her through a shuddering, twisting orgasm that made her feel wholly complete and completely bereft all at once.

Once Nyssa had nursed her through the last of the sparking aftershocks, once Sara had caught her breath, she tugged Nyssa up for another kiss, tasting herself on her lover’s tongue and chasing it, rolling them over so Nyssa was pinned beneath her.

Sara felt strung out and satiated, but she wanted to break Nyssa down to her component pieces and watch her come back together in languid splendor.

Nyssa grabbed Sara’s wrist and drew her hand to her breast, gasping a little and arching when Sara took the hint, pressing her fingers into the soft skin, finding her nipple and rolling it between finger and thumb, smiling at the way Nyssa's eyes slid shut and her lips parted around a silent moan.

Sara replaced her hand with her mouth, applying her teeth so there was _just_ that edge of pain Nyssa needed to actually get off.

Ollie had needed that, too, after the island. Before… Well. _Before_ Sara had been young and naïve and had never fathomed that true pain had a real place in the bedroom.

Clumsiness, sure, and Ollie hadn't been her first but he _had_ been her best lover before Nyssa, and Nyssa had-- well. Nyssa had taught her a lot, and not just about killing.

Sara grazed her free hand lazily down Nyssa’s side, and back up again, and froze. “Nyssa?” she asked quietly, thumb brushing along the knotted mess of scar tissue she hadn’t let herself pay attention to before, even as her fingertips felt the extent of the parallel mark on her back. “Nyssa, what is this?”

Nyssa’s eyes flashed that impenetrable green again, and she sat up in a graceful motion that brought her face to face with Sara.

“I earned it in honorable combat, beloved,” Nyssa said. “Do not think of it. It doesn’t pain me.”

“It-- it’s a fatal wound!” Sara protested, drawing away and trying to regain her equilibrium. “It may not pain you _now_ but it sure as hell-- _when_ did you get this?” she demanded.

Something about Nyssa’s earlier phrasing seemed… familiar.

Nyssa brought a hand to Sara’s mouth, her fingertips pressing silence into her lips. “Sara Lance, please,” she said, and Sara shook her head.

“Did Ra’s do this?” she asked, hardly daring to even _think_ the question, but needing to know. A knot of cold dread was forming in her gut. “Nyssa, did your _father_ stab you?”

“Ra’s al Ghul accepted my demand of a trial by combat,” Nyssa said stiffly. “I won. My father--”

Nyssa reached for her khet on the floor, and Sara shifted to accommodate her.

She held up a familiar silver chain; the one that had the pendant Ra’s had given Aminah for their first courting gift. It was Nyssa’s most prized possession. Next to it now, on the same chain, was a glass vial, the familiar viscous flow of pit viper venom within. Its cork had been sealed over with molten gold and the chain ran through a gold circle that had been molded on top. “ _This_ is the gift my father gave me.”

“Poison?” Sara asked, feeling helpless and small and suddenly remembering why she had left the League. They weren’t people here-- there was no room for love or…

“Mercy. My father offered me mercy.”

Sara stared at the vial on the chain as it spun lazily in the glittering lamplight. “That’s not mercy, Nyssa,” Sara said. “That’s--”

Nyssa draped the chain over Sara’s head and bent to kiss her breastbone just above where the cool metal had landed. Sara shivered.

“Sara Lance,” Nyssa said quietly. “Why did you come here?”

The green shadows that darkened Nyssa’s eyes made her look uncannily similar to her father in a way Sara had never found her to be before. “Nyssa,” she whispered, a protest, a denial. “I--”

Nyssa shook her head. “I am sorry, beloved,” she whispered back. “I did not mean… just lie with me, tonight? Let me hold you. Pretend you are mine again.”

“Nyssa, I will never not be yours,” Sara protested.

“Pretty bird,” Nyssa said, kissing her lips. “You were never mine.”

Sara sucked in a sharp breath and kissed her back.

***

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like, beloved,” Nyssa said as she redressed in the same clothes she’d been wearing before. “I have to get back to--”

“I need your help,” Sara blurted, and Nyssa stopped, still shirtless, with her tunic in hand.

“Whatever it is, you know it is yours,” Nyssa replied, her voice husky with emotion. “Just say the word.”

“I need-- there’s an army of-- you remember when you found me?”

Nyssa smiled a half-smile and turned slightly, putting her clothing back on more slowly now. “I could never forget,” Nyssa replied. “Sometimes I am surprised that you do, however, as you were so close to death.”

Sara shrugged, dismissing that. “You remember what you were looking for? The mirakuru serum?” Nyssa nodded. “Well, someone else found it, and he has a grudge against-- against Starling City. There’s an army of mirakuru-enhanced soldiers preparing to destroy my home, and I… I’m sorry, but I need your help.”

Nyssa shrugged back into her robes of office and reached for her neck, frowning slightly when she found nothing there, until she turned to Sara and saw her necklace where she had left it.

Her fingers wrapped around the chain and twitched it minutely, centering it. “You know I would protect you with all I have. I will make the arrangements now; we will leave as soon as we have readied men to bring with us.”

Nyssa leaned forward and pressed her forehead against Sara’s. “Besides, I wish to show your archer who is the better between us, and I have not yet met your Ollie.”

Sara opened her mouth, but Nyssa kissed her to silence. “You are Beloved to Ra’s al Ghul, and you will ever have all the rights of one so Beloved, under our laws, until the day my breath is parted from my breast. You know this, Sara Lance.”

Sara nodded and didn’t try to speak again, though she wanted to. The guilt swarming under her skin made her feel sick, but Nyssa was-- Nyssa loved her, and Sara could not take _that_ from her, no matter how guilty she felt about it.


End file.
